The Plans posted on November 11, 2007 by Holly Hayes

Tomorrow morning we move out of our beloved Great Milton farmhouse and will be on the road for the next two weeks. We are sad to leave our English village lifestyle but also very excited for our next adventures.

After we leave here, we will do some final touring of England before returning to Oxford for graduation on Saturday November 24. Thankfully our landlords are letting us store some stuff in their guest room in the meantime, so we don't have to take all our worldly belongings all over England. We'll pick them up after graduation and then head for the Continent.

Plans have unfortunately changed with regard to Ron's visit, since Jimmy Page went and broke his finger. The concert has been rescheduled to December 10, but Ron has successfully changed his flight and we will still make it.

So here's the latest plan:

Nov 12-14 - three nights in Brighton Nov 15-18 - four nights in Canterbury Nov 19-22 - four nights in London Nov 23-24 - two nights in Oxford for graduation on Nov 24 Nov 25 - drive to Dover and take the car ferry to the Continent! Hooray! We will land either in Calais or Dunkerque, France. Nov 25-30 - five nights somewhere in Belgium, probably Brugge. Day trips to other places in Belgium or Netherlands. Dec 1 - Move into our new apartment in Bonn, Germany Dec 1-7 - Explore Bonn, Cologne, and especially Christmas markets!! Dec 8-11 - Drive back to London to attend the Led Zeppelin concert (we were one of the lucky ones to win tickets) Dec 12 - Train and ferry to France, and probably pick up a new rental car. Dec 12-Jan 31 - Exploring Europe and attempting to learn German from our base in Bonn. Feb 1-?? - yet to be determined! But somewhere in Europe. Probably Fall 2008 - Back home to the US of A.

So we will be driving our current car all the way to Germany, which will mean driving on the right side of the road with the steering wheel on the wrong side. But David is talented and we'll try to keep driving to a minimum. Incredibly, it is only a two-hour drive to Dover, a two-hour ferry crossing, then less than an hour to Brugge.

After much web searching, decision-making, international faxing and e-mailing, we have secured ourselves an apartment on the outskirts of Bonn. It is in a really wonderful location - right next to the Rhine River - in a village/suburb between Cologne to the north and Bonn to the south, but closer to Bonn.

We can go into Cologne or Bonn on the tram, and from there pretty much anywhere in Europe on a train. But it's also a great location if we have a car, since it's not in a big city with bad traffic, yet close to a major highway. We haven't decided if we'll need or want a car yet, but it's nice to have the option.